


Bíonn gach tosú lag.

by Araine



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 13:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan takes the Oath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bíonn gach tosú lag.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



Ever since he could remember, Ronan felt angry. Most of the time it pressed up on the underside of his ribs, like a cap on a steam valve that seemed to grow hotter by the minute until eventually the cap burst and he was so full of boiling steam that he was bound to hurt someone. 

He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but it seemed he had no choice in the matter. It was Ronan Nolan’s God-given talent, that when he was angry he always hurt someone. 

It never seemed to matter _the reason_ why he was angry—and there was always some reason. Whether it was boys at school bullying other kids, or his mother and father always working extra hours to make ends meet, or the banks were screwing over the working class for the millionth time, there was always a reason. 

Today it was—

Ronan sighed and kicked a fencepost. It fell crooked and that only made him feel more awful. Red-cheeked, Ronan righted the post, taking his time to make sure it was properly rooted. He walked off down the road, dawdling as much as he dared and trying not to imagine what would happen when his parents got home.

Ronan wished they’d get angry. That might have made his flight of temper better, somehow, given it some sense. His parents would be angry with him and he could be angry with them and they’d have a great big row and he could storm off without guilt. 

Instead his father would get somber and rub his temples and pour himself another cup of tea, and his mother would look beleaguered and downtrodded and ask him, “For the love of God Ronan, why?” 

And the worst part of it was, he didn’t have a good reason. Not really. Certainly not this time. 

They’d been learning about the Roman invasion of Britain and its points of failure and the local history around County Wicklow and discussing it at lunch, and then Mark Peairs had said, “Well maybe they should’ve let them stay—“ and the steam vent had gone hot in Ronan’s chest and he’d got in Mark’s face and said, “What, you think we should’ve let them stay, should’ve let all the invaders stay. It would’ve been funny to let the British stay, d’you think?”

From there it proceeded exactly as Ronan had wanted. Mark had shoved him with a scoff and a, “Get out of my face Nolan.” The pure physicality of the shove had blown the cap on Ronan’s temper. The next thing he knew, Mark was on the ground with blood on his teeth and Ronan pounding him and the other kids just watching, in awe and horror, as the teachers came running. 

He didn’t relish explaining to his parents that he’d got in trouble in school for fighting for the third time in as many months. He felt paralyzed from the inside by the idea that he might be expelled for fighting and have no place else to go, and yet he could not seem to keep his head straight. 

Ronan might have missed the man who strolled up alongside him, except that he appeared to be making a concentrated effort to cross paths with Ronan, despite all the room on the road. Ronan stuffed his hands in his pockets, pretending to ignore him, all the while surreptitiously keeping an eye on the man. 

He was dressed in scuffed jeans and a plain white t-shirt. Old, but not ancient, with a little bit of black left to his hair and a wiry power to his muscles. He could not have looked any more like a Bray local, and yet Ronan could not place his face, and there was a feeling about him—

Odd. 

Different. 

But familiar.

“That was kind of you, to right the fence,” the man said, and Ronan scowled at him for speaking, because he could no longer pretend to ignore him. 

“Is it your fence?”

“Of course,” the man continued, heedless of Ronan’s question, “you wouldn’t have had to fix it, if you hadn’t broken it.” 

Ronan scuffed his shoe on the road and jammed his hands deeper into his pockets. “I can’t pay you. I don’t got any money,” he said. “My parents haven’t got none either.”

The man chuckled. “Now isn’t that the truth,” he said.

Ronan felt an odd camaraderie with the rueful truth in his tone—here was another soul who knew what it was to be poor, for everyone to be poor, for a whole country to be brought to its knees by the powerful—but he said, “Did you see me from all the way over here?”

“Something like that.”

Ronan squinted at the man, trying to figure out what he meant, if he was being mocked.

“I didn’t see you.”

“Course you didn’t. You haven’t any idea how to look properly.”

Now he knew he was being mocked. Ronan sped up his pace, trying to shoulder past the man, but infuriatingly he kept his pace even with Ronan’s. Ronan glared at the man, and got a cheerful, hard-edged smile in return. 

“What do you WANT?” Ronan exploded. He’d stopped in the road, his fists out of his pockets and ready for a swing, even if he was sure he’d lose and lose badly. He could sense a power in this mysterious man who hadn’t answered clearly even once just stood and blinked—nonplussed—at him.

“Well,” he said, “you’re quite the angry one, aren’t you?”

That took the fight out of Ronan. “So?” he asked, more sullen than angry. “You think I should just stop being angry, you think I haven’t tried that—“

“Oh no,” the man said, “never stop being angry.” 

Ronan gaped at the man, too surprised to even pretend to be sullen anymore. Aware that he must look ridiculous he closed his mouth, searching for something—anything—to say to that. 

“Anger,” the man continued, “was never evil’s prerogative. Anger is something to be used against evil—for the poor, the disenfranchised, anyone left without a voice. It can be used for evil, of course—when it’s used to hurt someone, when it’s misdirected, but in its purest form… anger was what the Powers felt, when the Adversary denied the Life of the universe, and anger is what keeps it in check.”

“That’s an interesting take on Paradise Lost,” Ronan said, with an ironic quirk of his mouth. He’d read Milton, and he was starting to wonder if this man wasn’t cracked, or maybe very drunk. 

“One of many stories,” the man said. “The same anger allowed Lugh to keep the Fomori from Ireland forever.” 

“Fairy stories?” 

“More true than you think.”

Ronan scoffed, and looked away, but he could feel a pricking intensity at the back of his neck. He turned around, looked into uncomfortably blue eyes that seemed to stare somewhere deeper. “What do you mean?” Ronan asked, his tongue suddenly heavy in his mouth. 

“I mean,” the man said, “how would you like to become a wizard?”

“You’re off your nut,” Ronan said, without much feeling. 

“It’s a lifetime job,” the man said, “but one that needs doing. The universe is slowly dying, and we slow it down, as much as we can, wherever we can.” 

“How do you do that?” Ronan asked. “Stop the universe from dying, I mean.”

“By speaking up. Doing the right thing. Using whatever anger and power you have to make things better where you can. The Powers That Be choose the wizards and they don’t choose lightly, because they don’t like to waste power—but wizards speak the language of the Universe, and that’s fair important.”

The language of the Universe? Was that even possible?

“You will see terrible things, injustices that you can’t even imagine, and closer to home than you ever thought, and that will feed the anger inside you, knowing you can’t stop it all. But there’s also goodness, and the knowledge of a thing set right.”

Ronan breathed out. He hadn’t realized he’d held his breath while the man spoke. Although now looking at him, Ronan wasn’t nearly sure he was a man at all. The shadows in the plains of his face seemed dark and endless, but his blue eyes seemed wild with a light that was impossible to look into, for it was dangerous, and righteous, and bright, and pure. 

Ronan thought of Mark Peairs’ split lip and the hurt in his parents eyes when he was told off for fighting again and the little cap of anger just inside his ribcage and everything on the television and Ronan Nolan Sr. coming home, exhausted, after a double shift and he felt caught betwixt and between. 

Surely this was utter nonsense, and he should just leave well enough alone. 

Maybe, if he took it, he could do something right for once. Maybe he could find some control over his life. 

Maybe this ineradicable anger would start to make sense. 

Maybe he would stop hurting everyone. 

“How?” Ronan asked. 

“You turned about quick,” the man said. “Don’t you want to think about it?” 

Ronan shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Not really,” he said. “Either you’re off your nut and I’m a damn idiot, or you’re telling the truth and—“

And he could finally _do_ something. 

“Fine,” the man said. “Listen, and you’ll hear the words. Once you say them, there’s no going back.”

Ronan listened, and somehow the wind picked up on that little country road, and he could hear—

He closed his eyes.

“In Life’s name and for Life’s sake…”

And he thought he heard another voice—a voice that was dangerous and righteous and bright and pure—asking alongside the Oath:

_Will you take up my spear?_

Knowledge filled Ronan that he did not understand, that he might spend a lifetime deciphering. A flash of wings and terrible anger and terrible love and a vastness beyond all knowing, that stretched outside of body, of time, of single mind or purpose, bearing down on him and he knew that he could refuse and still he answered:

_Yes._

**Author's Note:**

> "Bíonn gach tosú lag" is a Gaelic proverb meaning "Every beginning is weak".
> 
> Because of Ronan's deep ties to Ireland and specifically rural (and potentially working class) Ireland, I tried my best to do my research, but not being Irish I am bound to have made some misstep with regards to accuracy. All mistakes are my own, and I apologize for them. If you would like to point out anything I got wrong, I will gladly fix it, provided the fix does not greatly alter the flow of the story.


End file.
